The Two-State Mirage

These days I'm finding myself amused at the vehemence with which otherwise liberal westerners hold to the idea that a two-state solution to the Palestinian conflict is just around the corner. For several years, the refrain has been "everybody knows what it will look like, they just have to ...".

Now that Netanyahu is poised to take over Israeli politics, the conditions liberal Westerners have claimed would have to be met for a viable two-state solution to appear clearly will not be met. There will not be significant pullback from the settlements, and there will not be a contiguous West Bank, instead the West Bank will be a series of cantons, with not direct access to each other, much less to the outside world.

The Palestinians would not have, without duress, voted for a contiguous West Bank/Gaza state without a right to return that would threaten Israel demographically. The West has always intended for the vote to be under extreme duress - the Palestinians are to be told that the alternative is to starve. A vote under duress will not be accepted as legitimate and the feeling that there is still an injustice to be rectified will continue throughout the Arab and Muslim world.

Another issue on the side, is that most Palestinians believe the refugees are part of the Palestinian nation that should be included in the vote. Including them guarantees that any referendum will fail. Westerners have no intention of including them.

A two-state solution is just not practical. The Palestinians are not going to accept what Israel is willing to offer without an amount of compulsion from the West that will render any vote meaningless. It isn't really less practical under Netanyahu than it was under Olmert. It isn't and wasn't going to happen either way.

This is an issue Westerners are able to avoid by through the belief that negotiations are going to, at some point in the future, and by magic, create an arrangement the Palestinians will find acceptable but that does not threaten Israel. I've never seen such an arrangement spelled out in detail, even as a discussion of what would be plausible.

The purpose of the two-state solution, now, seems to me to be a mechanism for indefinitely maintaining the status quo, but reducing the guilt associated with the ongoing dispossession, starvation and violations of the Palestinians.

Advocacy of a two-state solution that will agreed to right around the corner is a relatively guilt free way to advocate the status quo. What we have now is the two state solution we'll have in the future. Egypt's people would not accept what the West would present - meaning a compelled referendum - so Egypt's 80 million people will have to remain under pro-American dictators indefinitely. Same for Jordan and the rest of the region. Palestine's people would have to live under their own pro-Western dictatorship, because free to vote, they'd elect parties opposed to this outcome. There would be resistance on the same fronts that exist now. There is no difference between what the Middle East would look like after the Western vision of a two state solution and what we see today.